JavaOne2008. Thursday roundup

Wow what a week.

It seems like a long build up to the release of JavaFX and the new browser plugin and I can't wait for it to happen. As Jim mentions in his summary of day 3 I think there will now be a concern amongst AJAX followers that the technology is going to look dated. At the moment AJAX front ends that want to be really rich seem to rely too much upon Flash, look at Google Analytics - all the charts are Flash.

Even today AltioLive's Graph control that will be released in Altio 5.2 shows the power of Applet based technologies over JavaScript. There are several JavaScript based graph widgets but they tend to be slow when handling lots of data.

I strongly believe that Java 6 has again made Java Applets an option for consumer Rich Web Applications and can come out from hiding in the enterprise solution area, and JavaFX further strengthens the position of Java Applets as a solution.

I'm sure that if you talk to the Java SE team they will strongly disagree with the idea of JavaFX being "stillborn". Healthy competition between SilverLight, Flash, Applets and AJAX is required to provide end users with the best user experience possible.

If you want to see a real FilthyRich Web Application look at the AltioLive IDE, as Jim put's it we "Eat our own dog food" I don't believe a product can trully say it is good unless you can create an IDE using the underlying framework. I like Eclipse but there must be something wrong if AJAX and Flash don't have IDE's using their own technology. NOTE: there are some AJAX IDE's out there.

JavaOne2008. Java applets still have the power to draw a crowd

Conclusion for Tuesday 6 May - Java 6 update 10 provides a whole new opportunity for Java Applet technologies to compete on a level playing field with Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight. The combination of improved download options, faster JVM load times combined with JavaFX rich graphics will enable the AltioLive product to focus upon adding value to the Java Development community rather than overcoming problems with the Jave SE plugin technology. 2008 and 2009 provide many opportunities for Java Applet technologies and I feel confident enough to say that Applets are NOT a "old school" technology, and are here to stay for the forseable future.

Loss of focus by Sun Microsystems and/or the Java product team is the only concern. If enough Java developers push for improved performance and a simpler user interface API's Sun will need to meet the demands. It's about working as a "community", considering all the options and not thinking Adobe and Microsoft offer the only solution to rich user interfaces in a web browser.

Enough of my soap box rant and a quick review of the day.

The booth had a steady flow of people interested in both the freebies and our product. The interest in a product was really great to see making all the hard work to improve the AltioLive product worth while, and the java development community still has interest in Java Applets technology.



Jim and I guess about 80-100 came to the presentation, and given that the were a number of very big talks by popular speakers I was pleased. Aside from not feeling too good - a serious lack of sleep, the talk went really well, with a few lessons learnt should we do a talk again next year.




The question that catches you out! - "How do you get two applets to communicate in the same browser session?", Jim put a lot of effort into his examples and neither of us spotted the fact that we didn't do an example of Java Applets talking to other Java Applets, is direct communication possible and more importantly should the security model allow it to happen. Not something I plan to answer in this blog.

Jim gets his 10 minutes of fame- a surprise visit by the JavaOne2008 reporter caught us out and Jim had to do a 10 minute technical interview about applets and AltioLive - good interview Jim especially when it was at the end of a very long day.

Why use AJAX in the enterprise?

It appears that Forrester Research Inc may have upset a few AJAX people out there by claiming that power users are less than impressed with AJAX in the enterprise (see "AJAX-powered Web apps disappoint power users, Forrester says"). That's not really news at Altio., for a long time we have been aware that the Enterprise power user can be extremely demanding.

Creating a Enterprise application for the browser requires the following at a minimum

• Responsive user interface


• Ability to work with large volumes of data


• Provide all the features expected from a desktop application, which probably means interacting with other desktop applications.

The computerworld article quotes:

" most AJAX frameworks tend to keep all real business logic on the server as opposed to local systems, user interactions may require a roundtrip communication between the browser and server for each input field"

I'm not sure how true this is, I guess JavaScript would need to do this to ensure it maintains performance. Altio does not have this issue and allows for client side validation without any additional performance overhead associated with server roundtrips.

"Some large applications could easily have 50 fields on a single screen."

This statement seems to have caused quite a stir, resulting in a number of strongly worded comments. I would agree that 50 fields does seem like an extreme GUI and probably breaks a lot of usability and GUI design rules but I have seen a number of Call Centre application both in the UK and Far East which have a lot of complex screens with many input fields, including editable lists on one screen (maybe not 50). Sometimes the nature of the business domain requires this. So technical purists who maybe have little business knowledge probably needed to tame their comments a little. It is the business that drives IT demand, it is down to people working in technology to meet the business demands, not enforce technical constraints on business users.

"As a result, AJAX developers told Forrester that they had to reduce real-time input validation compared with traditional rich clients to meet performance requirements. Real time input validation is a top priority for power users, the report said."

Well why not consider Applet based technologies. Applets provide a rich user experience all within a browser, the best of both worlds. I was surprised that the report summary only discussed Adobe and Microsoft Technologies. This shows a lack of knowledge of what Sun are doing in Java 6 with the new Java plugin and Java FX.

Altio and AJAX are similar in that they both interpret the business logic - Altio has it's own XML meta language that defines the logic while AJAX uses Javascript. Altio does provide a flexible means to manipulate data and interact with screens, in addition to this it comes with its own integration layer enabling rapid application development.

It could be argued that Applets have restricted memory because of the Java sandbox, but this will no longer be the case with Java 6 where it will be possible to request more memory from the operating system.

Overall I feel a lot of Analysts and the developer community are ignoring Applets as a technology due to its poor history. I feel that Applets should be used in Rich Enterprise Web Applications, and Sun need to advertise the power of Applets with the new support of Java 6. There are enough Java developers and using a tool like Altio abstracts away the complexity of understanding Swing and AWT.

February Roundup

Better late than never..... one day I will have time to do the summary of the month when the month ends.

IDE's Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 vs Eclipse
So I'm now well into .Net web services, although I have to say I do think Eclipse wins the best IDE competition. My distant past when using Visual Studio was my staple diet for cutting code must of blurred into happy memories.... reality has hit home - the autocompletion doesn't quite cut it when compared to Eclipse.

Other things that have come on the IDE scene is a new AJAX designer if there are anymore AJAX tools out there I can't see how people will decide where to look, why not try AltioLive it's not AJAX, it's not silverlight it's a full on Enterprise RIA, the IDE is written in Altio "so we live by what we preach" :-)

Visual Studio 2005 and Webservices
While I may not be impressed with the VS 2005 IDE I have to say getting a new web service up and running was impressive. I'm pushing the idea of Web Service Contract First (WSCF) and came across WSCF by Thinktecture. It does just what it says on the box, point at a XSD create the code and the WSDL. Although I didn't use the WSDL generator and depended upon the code generated by VS.

Enterprise RIA
Talking of Enterprise RIA Curl have a good article on the power of Applet based technology over AJAX and Macromedia Flash, just replace Curl with Altio and you get the same thing plus a lot more (IMHO our IDE and user interfaces are better - that's my view and not my employers, just in case there's legal issues here)


Google social graph
http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/
http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/terms.html
I'd like to see what AltioLive can achieve with the new graph control to display social networks.

Into March
March is ramping up to be manic..... the developers on Altio 5.2 are pushing hard to have a Beta release in March, it's that 95% complete syndrome.... the odd horrible bug that just doesn't want to go away.

Oh and by the way if anyone does read my rants come visit me at JavaOne in San Franciso this year.... a few of us from Altio have decided to setup a stall and shout about how great Altio is.